 - The Lander City Council took action this month to continue “unwinding” the Table Mountain Assisted Living Community project after its “demise” last year.){kind=link}
(Lander, WY) – The Lander City Council took action this month to continue “unwinding” the Table Mountain Assisted Living Community project after its “demise” last year.
The council already voted in December to revoke a resolution that had encumbered a lot in the Table Mountain Subdivision to obtain financing for the project.
“There’s no other option here,” Councilmember Julia Stuble said at the time. “We have to … let go of the dream that we’re (going to) be able to build some assisted living up there.
“I know that we’re not going to be able to build it in the way that we had intended, and this is just one step in that unwinding that we have to do, but it’s a bummer.”
Stuble made similar comments this month when the council authorized Mayor Missy White to terminate the $890,000 Wyoming Business Council Business Ready Communities grant the city received in 2022 to support Table Mountain Living Community infrastructure.
The council also approved a resolution removing the authorization for the Lander Housing Authority to manage the project during the same meeting.
The resolution states that, in June 2024, it was determined that the Lander Housing Authority would not have statutory authority to manage the Table Mountain project unless the facility was designed for 100 percent low-income purposes – “which is not consistent with the mission to make these services available locally for residents of all income levels.”
Since then, the city has “looked under every rock” trying to identify another group that could take on the task, Stuble said, but “no one was found,” so “we’re at the point where we have to say, ‘No, not right now,’ and put it back on the shelf.”
“I hope that it doesn’t gather too much dust on the shelf while we wait to see if conditions change,” Stuble said. “We need this here in our community, (and) the need is not going to go away – it’s only going to increase.”
White said she would keep her “fingers crossed that at some point we can have this level of care somewhere in the vicinity,” but she agreed that, “despite trying and trying to recontact folks … we do not have an interest in someone trying to operate this at the current construction prices.”
“I think it’s … really regretful,” Stuble said. “(But) sometimes you take a risk, and that’s what happens – conditions change that we weren’t foreseeing. … It sucks.”
Councilmember Dan Hahn echoed their comments, but he also said the project “was falling apart from the beginning.”
“Everything just started crumbling,” Hahn said. “And the people that were working on it (are) some of the smartest people in Lander. … When they can’t get a project going, even though it hurts to bail, it’s definitely for the best.”
For more information, call the City of Lander at (307) 332-2870.